Fake News: CIA Says Russia Preferred Trump

The Democrats (and we can lump in John McCain and Lindsey Graham as two peas in that political pod) would have us believe that Russia would prefer Trump to Clinton as U.S. POTUS.

Really?

Clinton of course would have continued with sequestration type cuts to our military budget while Trump was clear throughout the election process that he would rebuild our military. On that basis alone, the argument is clearly ridiculous to think Russia wants a stronger American military. Make no mistake, this is about making Trump look bad and pressing the Electoral Collegeelectors into changing their vote, which is upcoming in only 10 days. We are watching a full-court press by the Progressives. -W.E.

The Washington Post has unflaggingly stirred up hysteria over so-called "fake news,"
so it's extra-ironic that the media giant is one of the country's
foremost purveyors of the same.

In the Post's world, a bunch of guys
with Dorito-stained fingers who blog in their parents' basements have
done everything from manipulating the election to provoking a nutcase
into an attack on a D.C. pizzeria. Meanwhile, the Post's banner headline on Saturday was the innuendo-filled and poorly sourced announcement "CIA: Russia favored Trump," which sounds like fake news, too.

If
it's true that the CIA concluded that Russia deliberately intervened in
November's election to tilt it toward Donald Trump, that ought to worry
Americans, but not because Trump is a Russian mole or Vladimir Putin's
agents stuffed electronic ballot boxes. Rather, it is cause for concern
that American intelligence analysts are either not very bright or
politically corrupted enough to really believe such poppycock.
Meanwhile, the Post and much of the mainstream media, in their mania to
discredit Trump, will publish almost any sort of "news" nowadays, even
if it's as fake as the nonsense that makes up much of the blogosphere.

The
source of the Post's "scoop" is unnamed: "officials briefed on the
matter." In the story, the damning evidence is vaguely traced back to a
September briefing of congressional leaders by a trio of Obama
appointees: FBI director James Comey, Homeland Security secretary Jeh
Johnson, and counter-terrorism adviser Lisa Monaco. Alert readers will
note that none are actual intelligence professionals, while all are
practiced political hacks. Comey's
pre-FBI experience was mostly as a government lawyer, and his
corruption in favor of Obama during the Clinton email scandal is well
known. Johnson,
like Comey, is a lawyer, but with close ties to the Democratic Party,
who did turns in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Monaco is yet another Democrat lawyer who maneuvered her way into political appointments within the intelligence community.

Republican
and Democrat lawmakers were apparently largely split over the
conclusions of the Obama administration triumvirate. Obviously,
politicians on both sides reasonably sensed that the briefing was as
much about politics as it was hard intelligence.

This
meeting was followed up according to the Post by a CIA briefing of key
senators in early December in which the agency revealed that it was
"quite clear" (whatever that means) that getting Trump elected was
"Russia's goal."

In
fact, the Post article admits there is no hard intelligence that ties
alleged Russian hacking to orders from Moscow. The conclusions of the
CIA analysts appear to be based on a kind of gestalt that combines
allegations about Russian hackers, WikiLeaks, and past Russian
intelligence use of "middlemen" to hide involvement in intelligence
operations. Like
Comey, Johnson, and Monaco, I am not an intelligence professional, but I
do have a bit of intelligence experience regarding the Russian
government, having worked long ago in the then named Department of
Soviet Internal Affairs in the Intelligence and Research branch of the
State Department. My boss, Donald Graves,
was one of the nation's foremost Kremlinologists at the time. While I
was a lowly intelligence clerk, I did get a good sense of just how hard
it was to unearth the intentions and direction of Russian policy makers
and intelligence operatives.

As
an adjective, Byzantine means complex or convoluted, and the Russians
are the direct heirs to the actual Byzantine empire. Trying to divine
Russian intentions and motivations is notoriously difficult, and the
analysts I worked with, though among the best in the business, were
frequently wrong and quite conscious of their limitations. Not only
that, but the Russians are masters of espionage and disinformation, making the job of figuring out real, as opposed to manufactured, intentions all the more difficult.

But
beyond the simple evidential difficulty of linking alleged Russian
hacking to a provable Russian intention to throw the election are the
logical and operational problems that have to be reasoned away before an
analyst, even going out on a limb, can get there.

Attempting
to clear the path for one foreign leader or another, particularly that
of a critical rival, is an endeavor fraught with both practical and
professional difficulties for intelligence operatives, and thus likely
avoided. This country's own history of attempting to influence foreign changes of leadership is not distinguished and more often than not proves counter-productive.

In
pursuing such an operation, the Russians would have to have concluded
that they would be on the right side of three contingencies: first, that
Trump would be more amenable to Russian goals than Clinton; second,
that failing that contingency, Trump would be easier to outfox,
manipulate, or coerce than Clinton; and third, that Trump would be more
predictable than Clinton. Quite obviously, unless Putin and the
Russians are idiots – which they very clearly are not – they could not
reasonably draw these conclusions.

As
to the first proposition, there is precious little evidence other than
Trump and Putin have said nice things about each other. Trump stated it clearly:
"If he says nice things about me, I'll say nice things about him."
That both men are clever, insincere, sophisticated operators makes
their mutual blandishments almost meaningless.

As to the second, as I noted here,
there is little the Russians could conclude from eight years of dealing
with Obama and Clinton that would suggest that Trump would be an easier
mark than Hillary. From the abortive and ridiculous Russian "reset" to
the failure to put defensive missiles in eastern Europe to the Crimean
annexation plus additional aggression in Ukraine to the Iran nuclear
agreement and the practical rout of American interests in Syria and the
eastern Mediterranean, operating against Obama and Clinton has been a
veritable boon. What could possibly make the Russians think they could
do better than batting 1,000?

Finally, there is the critical issue of predictability. Trump has been excoriated on the left and also by some on the right
already for his unconventional decisions while still president-elect.
Domestically, say many Trump critics, the decisions regarding Carrier
and Boeing will create an unpredictable business climate, which might be
bad for the economy. Similarly. say others, Trump's decision to take a
call from the president of Taiwan upends decades of accepted policy and
could lead to unforeseen results.

Whether
the risks are as Trump's critics claim or not, there is no question
that Trump's approach so far has been both unconventional and difficult
to prognosticate. This is exactly what rival intelligence agencies do
not want to deal with. Hillary Clinton, if nothing else, is a known
quantity and utterly predictable. That is the bread and butter of
foreign intelligence. Why on Earth would the Russians prefer the
unpredictable Trump? Because they want a challenge?

What
most likely happened is that the Russians ran a sophisticated and smart
disruption operation during the presidential campaign – not to promote
Trump or defeat Clinton, but to undermine the legitimacy of the
election, which is a classic and fitting objective for the Russian
regime, which faces its own legitimacy issues.
The icing on the cake was to convince the gullible Obama administration
through its toadies within the intelligence bureaucracy that Russia
indeed prefers Trump to Clinton, thus further undermining the election
results. It's a fine consolation prize for Putin, who probably really
did not much care much who won – but in his heart of hearts, he had to
prefer Clinton.